A knowledge sorting process for a product design expert system

Knowledge sorting is one way to organize the knowledge acquired from the domain expert(s) and various sources. Well‐organized knowledge representation will make rule extraction much easier. This paper describes a knowledge sorting process that was developed to facilitate the rule extraction for a product design expert system. The process capitalizes on the relationships between design attributes and factors, dependent and independent variables, and consists of three stages: identification of knowledge sources, generation of taxonomic trees, and organization of acquired knowledge. An example applies the sorting process to the development of an expert system for the design of wood head golf clubs.